Speed the Scythe: Newspaper Staff Cutbacks Accelerate

Two recent newspaper cutbacks show those cuts are coming deeper and faster. New owners are no longer taking months to make cuts, now moving at light speed to reduce costs.

On Thursday, we saw the news the Herald Argus ("Where local news comes first!"), a daily of about 13,000 circulation, in LaPorte, Indiana, was cutting up to half of its 80-person staff.

Paxton Media Group, publisher of 32 daily newspapers with a total circulation of 370,000, bought the paper from Small Newspapers, closing the sale Oct. 1. Recently, some 30-plus staffers have been told they're terminated, some by the certified mail.

If you think readers don't notice who owns their local paper and or what it means to editorial quality, check out the 38 comments on the Herald Argus' own sale story. Readers get it.

Community coverage can't help but be significantly curtailed with such cuts, furthering papers' downward spiral. They become become less essential. Then readers' drift  becomes a stampede. Finally, advertisers find less of a mass market and further reduce spending. We can now see farther down the end of that funnel than we ever have before.

Farther east, in Connecticut, a Hearst/Media News partnership has closed on its purchase of the (Stamford) Advocate and Greenwich Time from Tribune. Gannett had bought papers earlier, but then backed out of the deal when an arbitrator said it couldn't break the existing union contract.

So Tribune made a new deal with Hearst (which is having Media News, a publisher of 10 Connecticut papers post-sale, manage the properties). As soon as that sale closed at the month's beginning, 13 veteran newsroom staffers found out their jobs were history. Among those on the list were top-ranking editors, including Editorial Page Editor Joy Haenlein,Sports Editor Bob Kennedy, Features and Food Editor Valerie Foster, Design Director Nelson Martinez, Weekend Editor Jonathan Rougeot and even Greenwich Time Managing Editor Bruce Hunter.    

We're reading editor's note after editor's note, it seems, but here's one that connects the passing of these staffers into the papers' 180-year history. Worth reprinting, from the article of by the (Stamford) Advocate's City Editor John Breunig:

Joseph F. Pisani, editor of The Advocate and Greenwich Time, saluted the departing editors for their dedication.

"There's a trend in the newspaper industry that suggests newspapers are 'better than they have to be,' that readers don't really want or need quality. But I can't imagine any of these editors settling for anything less than excellence. They were part of a 180-year tradition at these papers that will continue," he said. "They were the people who made The Advocate and Greenwich Time the best small papers in the country - all of them were committed to community journalism."

These cuts are coming at an unprecedented rate, not surprising given both the plummeting circulation and ad numbers. Who knows what 2008 has in store?

Comments

[Ken]

Paxton Media Group has single-handedly ruined at least two newspapers in my home state (North Carolina) and apparently is doing the same as it penny-pinches and slashes and burns elsewhere.

They are a disgrace to their alleged profession.